Dominion (10 page)

“Well, it looks like you've doomed us all,” said Fian, “you and that damned Mech.”

Peris felt sorry for the old soldier, his long-time friend.

“Please,” he said, “you must understand: Danis could not possibly have acted on a whisper. Had he tried to reveal what little he knew, he—and all of you—would have been killed by the Corps.”

There was a pause while they digested this. Peris thought that even Fian appeared to relent a little, although her arms remained folded across her chest, and she refused to look at her husband.

“Meia said she'd be back, with help,” said Danis.

“And she may well be yet,” said Peris. “She, more than anyone, knows the gravity of our situation. She will do what she can.”

“
If
she can,” said Althea. Her lips were tight. “After all, she went through Derith too.”

Peris looked around at these four dear, shocked faces, wishing he hadn't been the deliverer of such appalling news, and he felt tears come to his eyes. Embarrassed, he looked away.

“I'm just glad you're all still here,” he said softly. “I was worried I'd be too late.”

“When, Peris? Just tell us when,” said Althea, and her jawline grew even tauter, her expression grim. She pushed her wineglass away. “This is no time for sentiment, Captain.”

“I don't know to the day, but I have no doubt that very soon large ships will come and unleash their cargo, and the spores will be swept across Earth. That will be it. You ask me when, Althea? All I can say is that it could be anytime now. It might be weeks, it might be days.”

Fian was staring out the window.

“When we learned of the outbreak of war, we thought that was why the Diplomats had already begun to leave,” she said. “We assumed that they had been forewarned of the conflict. But then I kept thinking that if we were at war, surely they'd have shipped out many of the Galateans too, as cannon fodder.”

The Galateans were one of the first species conquered by the Illyri, and were much like large, muscular amphibians in appearance. The Illyri drafted them in to perform the drudge work of war. To their masters they were interchangeable, disposable even, but the Galateans did not resent their overlords. They even welcomed conscription into the Illyri forces, for anything was preferable to the hunger and despair of their home planet. And, in turn, the Galateans got to lord it over other alien species, whether the slave race known as the Agrons, or the violent, rebellious humans.

“But no,” continued Fian, “for while we have fewer Diplomats, the place is still awash with those toads, and no one seems to be in charge of them anymore.”

“Some of them have even gone feral,” added Althea. “They're roving uncontrolled in the countryside. And the Agrons are dying; their immunity medication has stopped arriving, and they're all getting sick. I thought it was simply cruelty on the part of the Corps, but it's more than that: they've all been left to die with us.”

Balen had called up a screen and was checking information, including activity around the wormhole nearest Earth. The rest ignored him. Balen, in their experience, was always checking something.

“So what can we do to stop them?” said Danis.

Peris moved his glass away too. The wine had lost its appeal. He shook his head slowly, aware of three sets of faces turned toward him—three, because Balen was fiddling about with his screen. It reflected in his wide, lidless eyes.

“We can do nothing,” said Peris. “That's why I've come here. To take you away. To rescue you.”

“What?” said Althea, and he swore that she sneered. She really had changed. “Are you going to rescue the whole planet?”

“Well, obviously I can't do that. But we can try to get as many Illyri off-world as possible.”

“What about the humans?” said Althea.

Peris watched as Fian reached for Althea's hand, and Althea took it automatically. Their fingers squeezed together tightly, and Althea's knuckles went white. Danis looked on with a kind of sadness; Fian had given to Althea the comfort that she would not give to him.

“There are billions of them, Althea, billions,” said Peris. “We barely have enough ships for the Illyri who are still here, let alone the entire human race.”

“Then we must warn them,” said Fian. “They can start to protect themselves, to make plans. There must be shelters they can use.”

Althea nodded in agreement, and together the two females stood up.

“Right now?” said Danis. “We haven't even eaten yet!”

“You heard Peris. When else?”

“If you go now, you'll cause chaos. There will be riots. People will kill each other to get to shelters. We need to think about this, Fian.”

However, Fian and Althea were already starting toward the door. The situation was moving out of Danis's control. But then, he realized, he had never entirely been in control. He had always been a puppet of the Corps, and now they were cutting his strings and leaving him to fall.

Before Danis could say anything else, Balen rose slowly from his chair. His golden skin had taken on a sickly, malarial hue.

“Look,” he said. He poked a finger through the images in front of him, deftly swiping them together. His movements were so quick that the points of light swirled together like paint thrown in the air, before rearranging themselves into orderly documents once more.

And they all saw what Balen saw: wormhole activity, barely hours behind Peris. A massive unidentified ship, moving toward Earth.

“I've hacked the system to check for incomings flights to all major stations,” said Balen. “Tomorrow, at thirteen hundred GMT, a number of large craft are scheduled to dock simultaneously. New York . . . Rio . . . Santiago . . . Cape Town . . . Beijing . . . Abuja . . .”

Balen slid screens around again, nodding to himself as they all watched and waited.

“All documentation and permissions for the incoming craft are direct from top brass, and signed off by the Illyri president himself, General Krake. Chatter between military bases appears to have reached consensus that additional staff are being drafted in at long last, especially given that the Diplomats have been shipping out many of those they had down here, and not replacing them. They think reinforcements are coming.”

“Reinforcements, my sorry arse,” said Althea, surprising Peris even further, although nobody else seemed taken aback by the governess's language. She really had changed. There even seemed to be a distinct Scottish lilt to her cussing.

“And those?” asked Peris, pointing to a series of flight numbers on Balen's screen.

“Corps vessels departing Earth over the next twelve hours,” said Balen resignedly. “It's an exodus. They're leaving us to die.”

Peris thought of Syrene, and her desire to see him head to Earth. Even then she must have known: he had been sent to the planet to perish alongside Danis, Fian, Althea, and everyone else who had ever crossed her, including the entire human race.

“What about Edinburgh?” said Danis. “Are we due a special landing too?”

“No,” Balen replied. “But there's a large ship scheduled to land at somewhere called Dunsop Bridge. Why there?”

“Dunsop Bridge in Lancashire?” It was Althea who spoke. “I remember it from Syl's geographical studies. It's often said to be the dead center of the United Kingdom. If those ships contain spores, then the ideal thing would be to start off-loading them right in the middle, and let the wind do the rest.”

“Will that work?” asked Peris.

“In due course, although the prevailing winds come from the southwest, so the south and Wales should be spared for a while. Ireland too. They clearly didn't do their homework properly.”

“No,” said Peris. “They'll have prepared well. This has to be just the first stage. They'll keep returning with more spores until they're done.”

“And Edinburgh?” asked Danis.

“If the first drop is at Dunsop Bridge, then it'll buy Edinburgh a few days, at best, maybe a little longer for the Highlands,” said Althea. “It depends on the speed of the wind.” She turned to Fian. “Now we have to get the word out.”

“And how are you going to do that, exactly?” asked Danis, who felt that this was his last stand in the effort to make his wife and Althea behave—as he saw it—sensibly. “It's not as if the Corps will give you access to the television and radio transmitters.”

“We'll use the Resistance's network,” said Althea.

Danis had long known that Althea had contacts—and perhaps more than that—in the Resistance. He had even used her to open channels of communication on occasion, mostly by discreetly mentioning some detail in the knowledge that she would pass it on, but he had always been careful not to openly acknowledge her divided loyalties. He thought for a moment.

“Do what you must,” he said, resigned now to the inevitable. “Balen and I will try to get word to the Military commanders we have left. Perhaps they can break out their forces from the barracks and try to stop the landings, or stall them. At the very least, it'll give them time to seize ships and start evacuating.”

But even as he spoke, he knew that there was little hope. Any unscheduled craft trying to leave the planet over the coming hours and days would be blown from the skies by the Corps, either by remote weaponry on Earth or their fighters above. By the time the ships carrying the spores began to descend, he would be surprised if there was a single Corps official or Securitat left on Earth.

A hand touched Danis's arm. His wife was beside him. She leaned forward and kissed him gently, then laid her head upon his shoulder. It was as close to intimacy as they had come in many months.

“Let's give a chance to as many as we can, Illyri or human,” she said. “I will see you back here when we're done. I promise you, Danis.”

And then she and Althea were gone.

O
vernight, Danis, Peris, and Balen contacted everyone they could think of to warn them of what they believed to be coming, but for the most part their concerns were met with polite bafflement. More often than not, they received raucous laughter in response.

“Have you been drinking again, Danis?” asked more than one base commander. The governor cringed at the “again.” How little weight his supposed authority wielded; how fractured the Military chain of command had become here on Earth, how insubordinate. The sense that they'd been left to rot was pervasive among those who remained on the blue planet, and they were more concerned about their vulnerability to superior Corps forces than of crazy talk from a washed-up figurehead who was known to be too well acquainted with the bottle.

“You say there are spores being sent from space to destroy us?” repeated Rupe, a former member of the castle guard who now headed up the Military detail in Santiago. “Alien spores, Lord Danis?”

He sounded worried, and for a moment Danis thought he'd finally found someone outside of Scotland who was taking him seriously, until Rupe added: “Perhaps you should see a doctor, Governor. You've been under a lot of pressure.”

There was no more that he could do. He could only hope that Fian and Althea were having better luck. Danis did manage to call in one favor, though. He succeeded in contacting Junior Consul Steyr, the Diplomat who had overall command of the European continent. To Danis's surprise, he had always found Steyr reasonable, even honorable, and they had worked well together during Danis's time as governor. Steyr was on his way to a departing shuttle, fleeing like the rest, when Danis got him on-screen.

“You're leaving us, Consul?” said Danis.

Steyr smiled at the older Illyri. There was a hint of sadness to it.

“All Diplomatic personnel have been ordered to leave the planet,” Steyr replied. “Our time here is coming to a close.”

“And Military personnel?”

Steyr's smile faded.

“For the most part, they are to remain on Earth.”

Danis trod carefully. This was not a secure channel.

“I have a feeling that those left behind may have cause to regret their posting,” he said. “I would consider it a great personal favor if the restrictions on Military travel could be relaxed to permit some of my staff and family to join the exodus.”

“Those are not the orders we have received.”

“We are all Illyri,” said Danis. “And my people have done nothing wrong, or nothing that merits their abandonment on this world.”

He held Steyr's gaze. Danis knew what was coming, and Steyr realized that he knew.

“Certain individuals were named as ‘essential' to the new Illyri presence on Earth, and were not to be permitted to leave,” said Steyr. “The list included your name, and those of a number of your immediate associates and family members.”

“At whose command?”

“The Archmage Syrene,” said Steyr. But . . .” He paused. “I don't take orders from the Sisterhood. Anyway, in the midst of such a chaotic situation as we have here, errors can be made.”

Steyr consulted briefly with one of his aides while Danis waited, his life and the lives of those for whom he cared most hanging in the balance.

“One ship,” said Steyr. “Those on board will join me on the
Oxion
, but they will officially be prisoners. Do you understand? There's no other way.”

“Thank you,” said Danis.

Steyr nodded, and killed the link.

•  •  •

In the morning, the reduced castle staff—or the Illyri staff, at least—were informed of the impending evacuation, and told that a ship would be ready to take them off-world. They would be permitted to bring with them only what they could carry. By noon, Althea and Fian had not returned. At one o'clock precisely, as a precaution, the castle entrance was sealed, for there was limited space available on board the waiting craft. Only those inside could be saved.